Just married and with a new show on TV, Glenn Close talks about taking another chance on love, keeping her life balanced, and raising a strong daughter.

As Glenn Close sits on a bench in a sun-dappled park in Brooklyn, it appears that she doesn't have a care in the world. Her skin is luminous and betrays no evidence of the fact that she recently turned 60; her green eyes are shining. Clad in jeans and a tan blazer, she is serene and smiling. But in truth, she has a lot on the line. She's waiting to shoot a scene for her new drama series, Damages, and on only the second day of shooting, the cast and crew are still getting to know one another. When a young man approaches her, he seems bashful and nervous.

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"Hi, Ms. Close. I'm Logan, the production assistant, if you need anything," he says before attempting a joke, "Oh, if anything goes wrong, I'm also the scapegoat."

"So you're the one to blame?" Close replies with a laugh. "That's good to know."

It's easy to see why he's a bit jittery, even if she soon puts him at ease. After all, this is Glenn Close, five-time Oscar nominee, well-known for playing women with an edge. Close is a little nervous herself: During her three-decade career, she's been everything from a Stepford Wife to Cruella De Vil, but she's never done a TV series. Two years ago, she whetted her appetite with a recurring role on the police drama The Shield, but this is the first time she has signed on to do a TV show from day one.

"It's a big commitment," she says of the show, created by a former writer for The Sopranos. "When I did TV as a young actor, people said it would kill my movie career. But if it's great writing, why not do it?" In fact, this is one of the juiciest TV parts to come along in years. Close plays Patty Hewes, the charismatic and utterly ruthless head of a top New York law firm who takes on Enron-size corporate cases. She's so gleefully cunning that it's hard to reconcile her character with the woman who now sits companionably close on this park bench — no "don't touch me" celebrity bubble here. Her willingness to take on this role is just one of many changes Close has embraced since that milestone birthday -- though she can hardly believe the number applies to her.

"All your life you think 60 is ancient," she says, "and all of a sudden you find you're 60 and you don't really feel that different. I feel stronger and more engaged." She laughs. "This is the best time of my life."

Last year, Close married biotechnology entrepreneur David Shaw in a private ceremony at his beachfront house in Maine. After two failed marriages, she once remarked that she'd never do it again. Certainly, her convincing portrayal of bunny-boiling psycho Alex Forrest in 1987's Fatal Attraction didn't help her social life — she admits that many men, when they met her, would say, "You scared the crap out of me."

But now, though she generally doesn't like to discuss her romantic life, she glows when she talks about the man who changed her mind about matrimony. "He's one of the most creative people I've ever met. He's a brilliant man, very much a man's man — he's incredibly athletic." The marriage has also meant a new family for Close: Shaw has three grown children who join Close and her 19-year-old daughter, Annie Maude, from Close's previous relationship with producer John Starke. The whole clan likes to gather at the family's house in Maine, which can be stuffed to capacity as the kids' friends come and go. The boisterous atmosphere is a bit different from the Manhattan apartment that Close and her daughter have always shared. "With just Annie and me, our house was a lot quieter," she says with a shrug.

Close became a single parent when Annie was 2, and the pair has always been extremely tight, happy to be homebodies together. But last year, Close dropped her child off at college for the first time, and whenever she needs to conjure up some tears in a scene, she says she draws on that moment. "It was a big deal," she says. "I did cry when I left her. Meanwhile, she was thrilled! Annie was just so ready."

She leans back on the park bench and enjoys the sun on her face. "I've always thought it was a really good sign to have an independent, strong child who wasn't afraid to venture out from home," she says after a moment. "I'm my child's custodian. I don't expect her to be like me. I just want her to be safe, to have good values, and to be able to eventually find work that's fulfilling."

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Close has always been careful about the work projects she chose because she was loath to leave Annie for any length of time. "After the sixth grade, when she started having a real life at school and she was on various teams, I couldn't haul her out of school anymore," she says. Two years ago, Glenn even walked away from a second year on The Shield — despite all of the acclaim she received for her work -- because she felt it was important not to miss Annie's senior year of high school. At this stage in the game, she doesn't want to sacrifice her life for her work.

"It was too far away from Annie," she says of the Los Angeles locale. "And I was not married to David then, but I was with him, and I would have missed him too much, too." She's much more comfortable on the East Coast anyway, far from Hollywood's red-carpet culture. "I can't stand that I have to agonize about what to wear and then be judged for it," she says. "I'm not a fashion icon and I don't want to be." She shakes her head. "I'm a terrible shopper. I freeze when I walk into a huge department store. I just run out of there. I've been on the best-dressed list and the worst-dressed list." She leans forward and confesses, "I kind of was prouder of the worst-dressed list."

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Though Damages shoots in New York, Close is still nervous about how the full-time job will impact her life. "It's always a balancing act," she says. "Ever since I became a mom, everything's a balancing act. And now I'm wonderfully married and want to be with my husband."

Close has a few more days of shooting and then she'll head up to Maine, as she and her husband now divide their time among that house, a Manhattan apartment, and a home in Westchester County, outside New York City. It's a five-hour drive — "We bring a book on tape, and our dog, and we're off." Maine has brought with it a few guilty pleasures: Ironically, given her new gig, Close isn't much of a TV watcher. But, she admits, "My husband's daughter-in-law loves American Idol, so when I'm up in Maine, I watch it with her. And we do a lot of sports-type things out there. Swim in the ocean, bike, play beach boccie, shoe golf...."

Come again? Shoe golf?

She laughs. "It's a Shaw family tradition. It's really fun — a lot of shoes go flying through the air." Apparently, no clubs are involved and shoes are thrown instead of balls, with the person landing closest to the hole winning. And Close has started another chapter in her life that completely surprises her. "Our family does a lot of triathlons," she says of her new extended clan. So now even Close, never quite the triathlete, has joined in, running the Iron Bear triathlon at Bowdoin College in Maine. "My whole goal, because I had never done it before, was just to finish," she says. "In the swimming portion of the race, I was in the slowest group. I swim with a snorkel, and I was the only one doing that. And as I started swimming, I started losing my breath and I thought, What am I doing? So I took off my snorkel and finished it doing the backstroke. I didn't care how I looked." During the race, she was dismayed to find that entrants had their ages written on their leg in Magic Marker. "Why they did that, I don't know," she says, perplexed. "So all these people would pass me on the road — 19, 20, 45." Still, using a combination of running and power walking, she made it across the finish line, and is getting ready to train for her next race.

And she doesn't seem to care about the number she'll have to write on her leg. "It takes this long to figure out a lot of stuff," she says. In fact, she now knows exactly what she would say to her younger self if she could. "I would say: 'Pay attention. Listen to your inner voice.' A lot of times what that inner voice tells you is not the easiest thing to do. But don't override that voice, because that's who you really are."

Although Close has gotten much better at heeding her own inner voice, she sees herself as far from the finish line. "I'm still learning so much," she says before heading off to shoot a scene. "But you know what? I probably feel more up for anything than I ever have in my life."